


Home Improvement

by sgteam14283



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, F/M, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 22:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4723112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgteam14283/pseuds/sgteam14283
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the landlord for his apartment building Clint knows how to deal with leaky pipes and clogged sinks. But the exploding Flubber in Tony's lab requires a different touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Improvement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> Written for be_compromised's annual Promptathon! The prompt was about Clint becoming the unofficial landlord of Avengers Tower while on a "vacation" from SHIELD and having to deal with the normal and not so normal stuff. Takes place post-Avengers and is kinda an au where Tony and Bruce like to play mad scientist. I had fun writing it and hope you enjoy!

The shower was leaking.

There was a hole in the wall from when Bruce played Angry Birds.

The patio door stuck for a second if you didn’t close it just right.

There was _another_ hole in the wall with the Wii remote still stuck in it from when Steve tried to play Mario Kart.

Ever since Clint had bought his (former) residence building and had to keep it up he noticed the little (and big) stuff. But this wasn’t his place so at first Clint left everything be…but then he didn’t see Tony for a few weeks and guessed that the man was busy with Stark Industries stuff, running R&D up the wall with all the improvements he wanted to make to the suit or coming up with more ways to drive Pepper to exasperation, which was why nothing was getting fixed. Or he was so focused on making the suit better that he didn’t see the little things.

Whatever the reason since Clint was getting that cooped up feeling from his mandatory ‘vacation’ from SHIELD after the whole Tesseract thing and needed something to distract him. So he grabbed his toolbox from his closet and started a Fix-It list, scouring the entire Tower and marking down what needed to be done.

—

Natasha walked into her room to see Clint underneath the bathroom sink and paused, watching as he finished tightening the pipe then setting the wrench down and groping for the calk gun which was just out of his reach. 

“Care to help?” Clint asked without looking up. He’d finished the patio door quicker than originally thought and decided to tackle Nat’s dripping faucet before she got back. She was in and out of the Tower so much that he thought that this would be perfect time to get it done.

“Doesn’t Tony have a maintenance staff for this kind of thing?” Natasha asked as she handed Clint the calk gun and tried to see what he was doing. She knew that he acted as landlord for his old residence but didn’t think that he actually liked it.

“Yeah, but they’re busy with the ground floors and I need something to do all day. Besides when I asked JARVIS to put in a request to fix the hole Bruce made, he said it’d take about two weeks to get it fixed. I got it done in two days.” Clint lifted his finger off the trigger and moved out onto the tile to see if there was anything he’d missed. “Let it set over night and it should stop leaking.”

Natasha nodded her understanding and watched silently as Clint packed up the tools and left her room, wondering why he was suddenly mister fix-it.

—

There was something wrong with the common room and it took a few seconds for Natasha to realize that the back wall was missing the scorch mark from when Tony had gotten a little too enthusiastic on demonstrating his latest gadget. Knowing that Clint had fixed it, she wondered where her partner was now; the last few weeks it seemed that whenever something broke Clint was there to fix it. Pepper had even told Natasha that Clint had filed the paperwork needed for a few remodeling jobs that the lower floors needed for her and said that he could handle any problems the crews might have since she was busy running a multi-billion dollar company. 

“You can turn it back on now JARVIS.” Clint’s voice drifted out from the kitchen and Natasha headed in that direction, sticking her head in as he finished squeezing out from behind the refrigerator. 

“Hey Nat.” Clint said smiling when he saw her out of the corner of his eye. He’d been in the kitchen when JARVIS asked him to take a look at the refrigerator, so he’d had the AI disconnect it from the power grid and took a look. 

“What was wrong with the fridge?” Natasha asked, curious because it had been running fine this morning.

“The filtered water hook-up was a little loose so I tightened it.” 

Natasha was silent as Clint rattled on about what he was going to fix next as he washed his hands and then packed up his toolbox. She’d noticed that ever since Clint was on his forced hiatus from SHIELD that things in the tower kept breaking and he’d repair them. At first she thought that it was just normal wear and tear of a bunch of people living together but now Natasha had her suspicions that something else was going on.

So she waited until Clint left to call out, “JARVIS, was the fridge really broken?”

“ _As Mister Barton said only the water filtration system needed some adjusting._ ” Came the reply.

“Right, but I used that this morning and you didn’t say anything. Did Tony ask you to break stuff for Clint to fix?”

“ _He did not. I have noticed however, that Mister Barton has been more upbeat since starting to fix items around the tower._ ”

Natasha was quiet after JARVIS finished speaking. It was true that Clint seemed a little better for a time after finishing whatever he was repairing, and Natasha had an inkling as to why. She also knew what the AI was doing. “Hey JARVIS.”

“ _Yes Miss Romanov?_ ”

“Keep it up.”

“ _Yes Miss Romanov._ ”

—

Clint was sitting in the common room with Natasha, going over some paperwork that Pepper had left for him, while Natasha was reading a tabloid (she loved reading all the rumors that they came up with about the team) when there was a muffled explosion followed by yelling.

“ _Sir and Doctor Banner require your assistance in the lab._ ” JARVIS said as they looked at each other. Dropping everything they leaped over the couch and ran down the stairs and through the hallway to the lab. Reaching the room they were greeted with the site of a gelatinous pink substance _everywhere_ ; including Tony and Bruce, who were sporting the outline of safety goggles on their face.

Covering her laughter with a hand, Natasha looked at Clint who was trying not to laugh as well. 

Suddenly the pink substance started to move and the laughter quickly petered out as it congealed into a larger pink substance. Feeling his eyes going wide Clint glanced at Natasha, who wore a similar expression of shock and horror. Then it leapt and all hell broke loose, Bruce was enveloped by the Flubber while Tony was shouting for JARVIS to enact ‘Protocol Thirteen,’ the lab doors slamming shut as Clint and Natasha dived into the room. Looking for something anything that would distract the Thing from the Pink Lagoon-Clint grabbed a flask and hurled it towards the pink encrusted Bruce.

The flask bounced harmlessly off and went flying back towards Clint, who ducked as it sailed over his head and shattered against the wall. “Nat-”

“Catch!” 

Clint turned as Natasha tossed him one of the many bow and quivers he had stashed around the tower (in case things like this happened) and he pulled out an arrow, taking aim for a second before letting it fly. The arrow stuck into the pink goo and Clint shouted, “Everyone back!” 

There was a _hiss_ and the gelatinous substance started to stiffen, Clint’s cryo arrow taking effect and cracks starting to form. “Nat!” 

“Gotcha.” Nat leapt over Clint while firing the prototype Widow’s Bite darts Tony had eagerly developed for her, deciding that there was no time like the present to field test it. The darts sent an electrical current through out the substance, the cracks widening. 

“You wanna finish it Tony?” 

Tony pulled back his hand and shattered the goo with a unfinished gauntlet, freeing Bruce and sending the man to the ground gasping for air. Once the chaos subsided Clint heard the doors unlock and slide open, and as Tony and Bruce started to argue over what when wrong and who’s fault the explosion was, Clint turned around while saying, “I’ll get the buckets and mops.”

“Get some rags too!” Natasha called out with a sigh.

After ordering Bruce to go clean up, and for Tony to make sure Bruce actually did so, Clint and Natasha got to work cleaning up the pink goo working silently and efficiently; Clint going for the floor and walls while Natasha concentrated on the countertops. After the last trace had been wiped, Natasha thew the rag into the bucket and looked at Clint. He had been silent the whole time and Natasha was wondering what was going through his head. Normally she could tell but he’d been distant ever since the whole thing with the Tesseract. “So how’s the list coming?” she asked casually.

“It’s coming, although you’d think that a brand new building wouldn’t need so much repairing.” Clint replied in a neutral tone, shrugging as he picked up the bucket and headed towards the utility room that was down the hall.

“I would’ve never guessed that you knew so much about home repair.” 

“Well I’m pretty handy when it comes to fixing most things.”

“And what about things you can’t fix? What happens then?” 

“Nat don’t…” Clint sighed, setting the bucket down with a loud clang and running a hand through his hair.

“Don’t what? I’m asking what happens when you can't fix things. Clint it’s been months since the attack and I’ve yet to hear how you’ve been doing.”

“I’ve been sitting on my goddamn ass that’s what I’ve been doing! Waiting to see if Nick will ever let me back into the organization and let me do _something_ other than be here all the time. That’s why I’ve been fixing everything that JARVIS breaks, yeah I know, so at least I don’t have to keep thinking about the fact that I got Phil killed.” Clint placed a hand on the wall, pressing against it as he leaned forwards and hung his head.

Natasha was silent while Clint ranted, knowing that he was finally being honest with her and, hopefully, himself. She simply put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, but after awhile Clint straightened and picked the bucket back up- going into the utility room and rinsing out the buckets and mops.

—

Clint watched as the hole in the wall got larger and shouted, “Thor, the northeast wall!” He then watched from his position on the kitchen countertop as Thor swung his hammer and a bolt of lightening towards the hole. He couldn’t see them, but the smell of burned electronics filled the air and that told Clint that the nanites had been zapped. The buggers had escaped the lab and were creating havoc, eating anything they could latch onto-although they seemed to favor drywall; having already destroyed one section of wall.

Fortunately at that moment Tony’s voice over the comms said told them that him and Bruce managed to deactivate the nanites and that it was safe to touch the floor again. Cautiously he leapt to the floor while seeing out of the corner of his eye Natasha doing the same.

“That was one game of the floor is lava.” Natasha cracked with a smile, seeing Clint groan and Thor draw his eyebrows together in confusion. “Don’t worry Thor, Clint’ll explain it to you.” 

“Right after I get photos of these holes. The paperwork for this is going to be interesting. I don’t think you can put ‘nanites’ as cause for renovation.” Clint said as he pulled out his StarkPhone and snapped a few pictures of the giant hole in the wall.

“What about ‘another of Tony Stark’s experiments gone awry.’ I’m sure the people down at city hall have seen that before.” Natasha smiled as Clint took out a measuring tape and started to figure out how he could repair the holes. 

It had been a year since Clint had decided to handle the maintenance for the building and a lot had changed. He was back in the field and Phil was the head of what remained of SHIELD, discovering that he was still alive had caused Clint to use his expansive vocabulary-even using a few new phrases that Natasha hadn’t heard before-but as Clint directed Thor in holding the opposite end of the tape she was glad that he was able to fix more than just the Tower.


End file.
